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-   -   Mallard Down in Perth (https://www.pprune.org/pacific-general-aviation-questions/590122-mallard-down-perth.html)

Brian Abraham 16th February 2017 01:57


would the mallard have a stall warning system?
None mentioned in the manual.

Ultralights 16th February 2017 04:53

you dont need a specific stall warning system to know of an impending stall.

Capn Bloggs 16th February 2017 05:02

I don't know about that, Ultralights. If you don't often go out and do stall refreshers in XXX type, how would you know? The reason stall warning systems are put in aeroplanes is so the pilot gets advance notice of what is about to/may happen. If you know your aeroplane really well, fair enough, but if you don't or if it is a vicious bugger, then...

Turning onto final... even the experts get it wrong...

dhavillandpilot 16th February 2017 05:59

I'd be very surprised that it didn't have a stall warning, unless specifically certified without.

The Heron and the Dove in original form didn't have stall warnings as they were specifically certified by the UK CAA without any.

john_tullamarine 16th February 2017 06:04

Re artificial stall warnings .. it depends on the aircraft shake, rattle and roll characteristics.

Current light aircraft requirements at FAR 23.207.

UnderneathTheRadar 16th February 2017 10:17

Aerostars don't have them

oggers 16th February 2017 11:43


Re artificial stall warnings .. it depends on the aircraft shake, rattle and roll characteristics.
Yep. Eg C-152 requires a horn, PA-23 doesn't because it exhibits sufficient buffet.

Cloudee 16th February 2017 20:15


Originally Posted by Capn Bloggs (Post 9677662)
I don't know about that, Ultralights. If you don't often go out and do stall refreshers in XXX type, how would you know? The reason stall warning systems are put in aeroplanes is so the pilot gets advance notice of what is about to/may happen. If you know your aeroplane really well, fair enough, but if you don't or if it is a vicious bugger, then...

Turning onto final... even the experts get it wrong...

The expert would have had a stall warning in his Cirrus, but apparently still managed to stall it.

Brian Abraham 17th February 2017 00:37

Should anyone really, really want to know stall warning requirements, the type received certification September 8, 1947 under Transport Category, CAR 4a.

http://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Gu...20Rev%2010.pdf

Edited to add: Had a look, no requirement I could find.

rich34glider 23rd February 2017 02:20

Having just read all of this I think the elephant in the room, as evidenced by the full right aileron & neutral rudder deflections visible as the aircraft started to spin, is the lack of effective spin training in GA - something that gliding (my world) still does very well. It seems like there are several reasons why he got into the situation but essentially he failed to immediately recover from an incipient spin/wing drop when very low. Sad.

djpil 23rd February 2017 22:34

CAR 4a specifies compliance with CAR 4b for transport category flight test requirements ... takes time to find it all ....

Clare Prop 24th February 2017 03:49

Training and stall warners aren't going to help you get out of a situation like that at that level. Disorientation would mean the pilot would possibly react inappropriately to visual and aural cues...if he saw or heard them. The series of decisions that took the aeroplane to that point are what caused the aeroplane to run out of numbers and stop flying.

rich34glider 24th February 2017 04:16

I agree that it was probably a series of decisions/circumstances that got him there Clare Prop (as in just about every accident) but I think it's unfortunate that GA training organisations spend so little time training for an instinctive & correct recovery for just this kind of scenario. With early recovery actions (right rudder, forward stick - no aileron - & full power) this may well have been recoverable in my opinion .. but yes, much better to not get in the situation at all. Humans will always make errors - best to minimise the consequences with appropriate training.

Sunfish 24th February 2017 22:13

Rich, conventional wisdom is that the practice of teaching stall/spin training caused more accidents, therefore it was removed from the PPL syllabus.

All you get is a demonstration with the admonition, "don't do this". The syllabus deliberately warns against teaching a student how to spin or practice a recovery apart from the "dancing on the rudder to pick up a dropped wing" BS.

I had to sign up for aeros to get taught to spin and recover. Still rusty on the process because there isn't an acrobatic aircraft for training within 100 miles of where I live.

Rusty1970 24th February 2017 22:33


Originally Posted by Sunfish (Post 9687182)
Rich, conventional wisdom is that the practice of teaching stall/spin training caused more accidents, therefore it was removed from the PPL syllabus.

All you get is a demonstration with the admonition, "don't do this". The syllabus deliberately warns against teaching a student how to spin or practice a recovery apart from the "dancing on the rudder to pick up a dropped wing" BS.

I had to sign up for aeros to get taught to spin and recover. Still rusty on the process because there isn't an acrobatic aircraft for training within 100 miles of where I live.

There are some interesting observations from driver training. You see the occasional A Current Affair story from some driver training organisation (or course with no commercial interest in the outcome...) saying "if only people were taught advanced driving techniques they'd know what to do if they lose control." Which on the face of it sounds sensible. Except that where it has been tried, from memory in Scandinavian countries, it had the opposite effect and fatal accidents actually went up. I understand mainly because it meant people learnt a skill then forgot in 3 months, but retained the overconfidence. Flying isn't driving of course and there is some opportunity to make people demonstrate the skills occasionally, but still...

Tarq57 25th February 2017 00:02

I think the better 'conventional wisdom' is to practice how to avoid getting in the situation in the first place.

I knew someone who was terrified of stalling the aircraft. Their partner, a very experienced pilot, had her fly it at normal cruising height all the way from departure to destination (a ~50nm hop) with the stall warning on all the way, so she could actually feel what the aircraft was doing, and how it reacted as it got a bit slow. This meant it took an hour to make the flight, rather than the normal half.

She reckoned it was a more valuable exercise for her than going up and practicing fully developed stalls. There's still a big place to practice stalls, though, as an exercise in why not to loose control in this manner.

Perhaps skid training in cars should be carried out using a similar philosophy.

I'm with Clare Prop: It was the decision making and general handling that was flawed, probably by the time the aircraft made its stall onset clear it was too late to do much.

How many of us, having gained the license/rating, then spend time on an ongoing basis, to play around with the behaviour of the aircraft near the edge of its envelope? For a lot, I think time and $ constraints would probably limit this sort of ongoing practice.

Clare Prop 25th February 2017 00:25

I was learning to fly (not in Australia) about the time that spinning was taken out of the syllabus and made optional. It was replaced by "slow flight awareness" pottering around right on the edge of the stall, horn blaring, keeping it in balance for a couple of hours from memory before you then did the fully developed stalls. People who wanted to do spinning went with the aeros instructor in the Chippy and did as as an aerobatic lesson.

Some interesting reading here:
An Evaluation of Stall/SpinAccidents in Canada 1999
http://www.richstowell.com/documents...a_TP13748E.pdf

In particular this part on Page 9 is relevant to this thread:
One feature that stands out in all except one of the 39 stall/spin accidents
examined is that knowing how to recover from the stall or spin was of no benefit to
the pilots in these circumstances. They stalled at altitudes so low that once the
stall developed, a serious accident was in progress.

rich34glider 27th February 2017 06:34

I still reckon some correct and instinctive recovery action may have saved the day .. certainly trying to correct the wing drop with aileron and no rudder guaranteed it was going in. Stick & rudder flying, just like was taught back in the good old days when Mallards were built.

rich34glider 27th February 2017 07:26

Even this Canadian research says "They (instructors) need to be able to teach their
students how to recover from these stalls as soon as the wing drops and before
autorotation develops" .. but everyone is saying the training is all too hard/not relevant .. confused!

Tarq57 27th February 2017 08:27


Originally Posted by rich34glider
I still reckon some correct and instinctive recovery action may have saved the day .. certainly trying to correct the wing drop with aileron and no rudder guaranteed it was going in. Stick & rudder flying, just like was taught back in the good old days when Mallards were built.

Even this Canadian research says "They (instructors) need to be able to teach their
students how to recover from these stalls as soon as the wing drops and before
autorotation develops" .. but everyone is saying the training is all too hard/not relevant .. confused!

I've done lots of stalls. Lots and lots. And a fair number of spins, in three different types, and I can't disagree with you. I used to practice stalls (and all sorts of other stuff) at least once a week, when I was flying lots. I was fortunate enough to be able to. I doubt the majority of pilots are able to maintain that level of currency.

I think, that in this kind of situation where there's been a stall/spin crash, that the pilots headspace was probably far enough away from what the aircraft was doing that the reaction time -even if stall recovery has been thoroughly taught - is likely to be excessive. By their very nature, it's clear these unintended events catch people by surprise.

I doubt that in this case recovery was possible once it was stalled. There may have been a brief opportunity before the wing started to drop, if the reaction had been correct and immediate. The out-of-spin aileron probably wasn't a mistake; it was more likely to have been a panic reaction, and by the time it was applied it was beyond recovery, anyway.

I believe that better training toward planning, and risk analysis regarding any proposed manouever, combined with some kind of resilience-against-surprise training might pay off better.


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